Testing the P2P Hypothesis with the HoloLens?

If you haven't seen it yet (see picture and video below), Microsoft's new HoloLens is an astonishing technological breakthrough. Using holographic technology and a wearable visor that bounces light millions of times to create 3D images, the Hololense gives its users experiences of fully interactive 3D objects in the external world. One can literally play a game of Minecraft on your coffee table, watch 3D computer characters run around and jump on your funiture, etc. 

 

Interestingly, I believe the HoloLens may help test a new theory of reality that I have recently advanced. As readers may (or may not) know, I have published a couple of articles arguing that our reality is probably a massive, peer-to-peer networked hologram, on the grounds that the functional architecture of peer-to-peer networking explains quantum phenomena (for which we currently lack any good explanation), as well as some perennial philosophical problems (for a brief summary, see here).

One common--and understandable--reaction I've received (both from philosophers and non-philosophers) is skepticism. I have often been asked, "Do you really think we are living in a holographic videogame?", and the theory is also often noted to be highly speculative. I think this kind of skepticism is reasonable, and that like any good physical theory, it should stand or fall with its predictions!

Interestingly, though, I believe the HoloLens may provide one initial avenue for testing the hypothesis. If the Peer-to-Peer Simulation Hypothesis is correct, then hooking a large number of hololenses together through peer-to-peer networking should (A) reproduce quantum phenomena (superposition, wave-particle duality, indeterminacy, etc.) at a non-microscopic level (i.e. the level of holograms), and (B) in a manner that we could project, visualize, manipulate, and measure. Allow me to explain. 

Consider how a single hololense works. It presents its wearer with a single hologram (say, a Minecraft city on your coffee table). Now imagine that multiple people wearing hololenses, each of which represents the same Minecraft city on the coffee table to each of its individual wearers. As such, anytime any individual measures (on their hololens) where something is in their environment, they will always measure those things as "point-like" (they will see, for example, a single image of the Minecraft city). Now, however, suppose that all of the different hololenses are linked together in real time not by a dedicated server, but merely by peer-to-peer networking technology (where there is no "definitive" representation of which hololens is "correct", but rather the interactive holographic environment is simply the union of all of the hololenses on the nework. If this is the case and there is imperfect error-correction technology (i.e. different hololense represents of the Minecraft city can diverge slightly), then different measurements of "where things in the minecraft city" are will differ slighly from measurement to measurement, hololens to hololens. Moreover, any measurement on any given hololens, by altering the entire network, should affect measurements taken by hololenses.

Notice what this means. If my model is correct, peer-to-peer neworked hololenses should give rise to direct holographic analogues of the "quantum phenomena" we see at a microscopic level in our world--namely: 

1. A superposition of parallel holograms each representing slightly different spatiotemporal properties for holographic objects,
2. Fundamental indeterminacy in object location (due to the superposition of many holograms)
3. A massive measurement problem (given that any measurement on any hololens will disturb the network of other hololenses, fundamentally altering where they will observe holographic objects as spatio-temporally located).
4. Wave-particle duality (since each individual hololens represents objects as being a particular points, but different hololenses represesenting the same object at slightly different points over time embodying an amplitude and wavelength in probability space).
5. A minimum distance (i.e. Planck-length analogue, due to digital programming).
6. Etc.

Not only that. Here's what I think the really cool thing is. Although each hololens would give its user a single image (i.e. of where the Minecraft city on the coffee table is), one could attach the peer-to-peer network to a central computer that in turn presents us as outside viewers a superimposed visualization of all of the holograms on the network: i.e. showing us in real-time the superposition that all of the hololenses on the peer-to-peer network comprise. As such, in real time, this superposition should appear to us to literally undulate like a wave. We should be able to see multiple overlapping holographic Minecraft cities interact dynamically so that the "surfaces" of objects (i.e. a castle) move 3-dimensionally in a wave-like motion: thus representing visually what is sometimes called in quantum theory the "universal wave-function"--as in:

 

In other words, I believe that empirical investigations of massively peer-to-peer networked hololenses could be used to show--in a way that we can see 3-dimensionally, in real time, right before our eyes--just how peer-to-peer networking gives rise to "quantum phenomena"...and so why, indeed, we probably are living in videogame. :)

Comments

[Elisa Freschi]

Marcus, this is fascinating. However, let me repeat the skeptical doubt I manifested some months ago on a similar post: It seems to be very unlikely that *reality* is exactly as in a technology which developed at a precise moment of time. It seems to me much more likely that we use the present technology to refine our understanding of reality, just like 18th c. philosophers spoke of God as a clockmaker.
In other words, it is great that you are working on a way to reconcile the fact that the world appears to be intersubjectively available with the fact that direct realism is as such untenable (this appears to me as the main advantage of your theory). Further, hololens and the p2p hypothesis seem in this sense a good device to think about this hypothesis. But I would hesitate to say that we are living in a videogame:-)

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Elisa: I appreciate the skepticism, and in a way I agree. Given that existing fundamental physical theories (e.g. the Standard Model of physics, etc.) are greater approximations of the truth (as opposed to the full and accurate truth), it is unlikely that the P2P Hypothesis is the full literal truth. Be that as it may, I would be happy indeed if it were an approximation of the truth--that is, a step in the right direction.

At the same time, I'm not as skeptical as you about the likelihood of reality conforming to a technology existing at a precise moment in time (viz. it is unlikely that just *now* we have created technology--peer-to-peer networking--that will unlock the secrets of the universe!). I don't think this is all that unlikely as now really is the first time that we are capable of developing *worlds* (i.e. simulated worlds). Given that our world is a world, and we are just now capable of *making* worlds, I don't think it is unlikely at all that that very technology--the technology to make worlds with functional analogues of tables, chairs, animals, people, bullets, cars, etc.--should be the technology to unlock the secrets of our world. It is, after all, a unique kind of technology: one that we have never had before. The ability to make a world. And, if we can now make them ourselves, it seems to me entirely likely that our world is similar in kind!

But what do I know? :)

[Elisa Freschi]

Thanks Marcus, but, again, was not it the same when clocks were first invented? People were fascinated by that and thought that the world could really be a mechanism which ---once put into motion--- could continue to work perfectly. And yet, no one now would think of the world in such a (too simple) way. Don't you think that in, say, 50 or 100 years time we will come up with even better techonologies and look back at the P2P as a *metaphorically* great explanation hypothesis?

[Nibiko]

The difference between clocks and now is that we're now dealing with the very fabric of the universe, i.e. quantum phenomena. Clocks are simple objects and easily divisible.

[Joe]

Love the theory. Any comment about the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment and how it may relate?